


The Annoying In Laws

by thatwriterlady



Series: 25 Days of the Holiday Season [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Annoying Mothers, Arguing, Celebrations, Christian Dean Winchester, Christmas Tree, Combined faiths, Dreidel, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, F/M, Frustrated Castiel (Supernatural), Frustrated Dean Winchester, Hanukkah, Holidays, Jewish Castiel (Supernatural), Love, M/M, Married Castiel/Dean Winchester, New Fathers, New Parents, Newborn Children, Traditions, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27944828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatwriterlady/pseuds/thatwriterlady
Summary: Castiel and Dean knew when they'd gotten together that there were many things they would have to blend together, and their faiths were part of it. Their mothers had taken it in stride until the announcement that they were expecting their first child. Now that Joshua is here and both Hanukkah and Christmas are around the corner the two women are bickering nonstop over whose religion is better. There's a lot to learn, even for two older women who think they know everything. They're in for a rude awakening.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, John Winchester/Mary Winchester, Rachel/Chuck Shurley
Series: 25 Days of the Holiday Season [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037259
Comments: 11
Kudos: 95





	The Annoying In Laws

**Author's Note:**

> Since both holidays are around the corner I thought it would be amusing to handle the topic of a family trying to combine everything, including their faiths. My daughter converted to Judaism about oh, eight years ago? There's a rich history on their father's side of the family but learning there was Ashkenazi in there too had come as a surprise. It made her feel more connected to her ancestors. She is engaged to a young man who was raised Catholic. Cue the interesting holiday season! And they don't even have kids yet! Thankfully I won't be fighting with his mother once the grandbabies arrive, but then again, she's a lay Catholic and I'm Pagan. Their kids are sure going to have an interesting upbringing!
> 
> Everyone celebrates differently, even when combining their faiths. They have both a menorah AND a Christmas tree, and let me tell you, the conversations at this time of year are never dull!

**Dec 6th:**

**_The Annoying In Laws~_ **

“Dean,” Cas leaned into his husband and propped their son up a little higher on his shoulder. Dean wrapped an arm around his waist as they watched their mothers arguing. It had been going on since before dinner had even started, and their bickering had only been escalating, much to everyone else’s chagrin. “I can’t take much more of them!” He kept his voice low for the sake of their baby but he was rapidly losing patience. He’d tried and failed for hours now to get them to stop bickering. If it continuted he would be tossing both their mothers out of the house.

“He should be raised in the Jewish faith, he’s a Jew!” Rachel Novak set the Menorah down on the table a little harder than was necessary.

“Oh stop, you don’t even light a Menorah at home,” Mary Winchester waved a hand dismissively.

“Yes we do! Don’t we, Chuck,” Rachel nudged her husband’s arm hard enough to rock him in his seat. He just sighed and rolled his eyes. “We have a nice one too, just like this!” She picked the menorah up and set it down a second time with the same force. Cas winced, hoping the metal didn’t leave any nicks in the wood. Dean had made the table himself and he didn’t want it damaged. 

“Well, we’re christians and we celebrate Christmas,” Mary set a box on the table that she’d had in her lap throughout dinner. There was a proud smile on her face as she opened it. Tucked neatly inside was a sleeper with a matching hat that said “Baby’s First Christmas”, with a little decorated Christmas tree underneath it. “He’s going to look so adorable!”

“They realize it’s Thanksgiving, right?” Dean whispered to his husband. Cas snorted and shook his head.

“We expected this, remember?”

Dean sighed and nodded. “That we did.”

“He won’t be needing that, we got him  _ these _ .” Rachel plopped an even bigger box on the table and pulled it open. Inside was a sleeper that said “Baby’s First Hanukkah”, and there was a blue dreidel underneath the words. Inside was a stuffed dreidel rattle, a stuffed Menorah, and a half dozen books on Hanukkah, all geared towards babies. Half of them were in Hebrew.

“Can you speak Hebrew?” Dean asked. Cas looked at him with one eyebrow arched.

“You know I can.”

“Yes, but can you speak and read it fluently? Aside from the little bit of Yiddish you speak with your mother I’ve never actually heard you  _ speak _ Hebrew.” 

“Well, I learned it for my bar mitzvah, but that was a  _ long _ time ago. I am admittedly rusty. I can read it, but it’d take me a bit of time to remember all the words.” He admitted.

“I can sing several Christmas songs in Latin, but that’s because I learned them in Latin,” Dean was telling him. “But as for speaking the language? Nope. It wasn’t an option in school. I took Spanish because it was easier to read since it’s a Latin based language.”

“Yes, I took that too, but you know I can’t even hold a conversation in Spanish now. I knew a few words here and there. Spanish isn’t the issue though, the battle between our mothers is.” Cas nodded towards where Mary was talking about the Christmas tree she and her husband, John had already put up at their house, and about all of the presents underneath it.

“You Christians and your overindulgence,” Rachel scoffed at her. “Hanukkah is about our freedom, about family, not about toys and nonessential crap. Joshua needs to learn these things, he needs to learn his heritage and what our people suffered through.  _ That _ is what’s important, not whether an imaginary fat man in a red suit shimmied down a chimney to leave presents under a fake tree. None of that has anything to do with Jesus! You claim to love him so much, and that it’s supposed to be a celebration of his birth, but you focus on gifts and Santa, not on your faith. You say you’re a christian? So what! You use your religion as an excuse, but have you even r _ ead _ the bible? Our son has read the Torah, front to back, and he knows what everything in it means!” Her voice had risen high enough that Joshua startled and began to whine. Cas lowered him so he could cradle him close. He spoke softly to their newborn until he settled again.

“Rach, you need to keep your voice down,” Chuck nodded towards the baby. “You scared him.”

“You throw  _ your _ religion in our faces like it’s better than ours,” Mary complained.

“It is!” Rachel hissed angrily.

“Why?” Mary demanded.

“You wouldn’t have your Christianity if it wasn’t for a  _ Jew _ who taught the people the  _ Torah _ . Christians whitewashed a man from  _ Israel _ , and stripped away his Jewish identity. It clearly states in your bible that he never wanted people to turn away from our faith,” Rachel raised a hand in the air as she began quoting a passage from the Gospel of Matthew.  _ “ _ _ Amen, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or serif shall ever pass away from the Torah until all things come to pass!” _

“That is  _ not _ what was said in the bible! What bible are you even reading?” Mary was annoying now. No one was exactly sure where she pulled it from, but she set a bible on the table and opened it. She cleared her throat and quoted the verse the way she knew it.  _ "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." _

“And what Law do you think he’s talking about?!” Rachel demanded. “He’s speaking about the  _ Torah _ !”

“No, no he isn’t,” Mary shook her head. 

“Actually, he is,” John spoke up. He’d been scrolling on his phone, checking the football scores and only keeping half an ear on the conversation.

“So you  _ agree _ with her?” There was fire in his wife’s eyes and immediately he clamped his mouth shut.

“Ok, that’s enough,” Cas handed the baby to Dean and walked over to them. He slapped a hand down on the table and frowned at both women. “Look, we get it, really we do. Mary, you want to make sure that Joshua grows up knowing about Christmas, what it stands for, and you want him to know the stories in the bible. He  _ is _ going to learn those things,” He turned to his mother when she let out a squawk of indignation. “And you will teach him from the Torah. You will teach him our history, the struggles, the quest for freedom, and you will teach him what Yeshua means to our faith, but Dean and I will be teaching him those things too. We will  _ not _ raise him to believe one faith is better than the other, nor will we teach him more about one than the other. Yes, our son is Jewish, but he is Christian too. You two fighting, it’s not good for him. It’s not good for him, it’s not good for us, and it’s not good for you. There is no reason you two can’t get along, so stop this nonsense. 

“You act like Dean and I didn’t sit down years ago to discuss how we would handle the fact that we come from two different faiths, or that we wouldn’t talk about how we planned to raise  _ our _ children. Keep that in mind, ladies, Joshua is  _ our _ son and at the end of the day it is our call what faith to raise him in, and what to teach him. We love you both dearly, and we want you in our son’s life. We want you to teach him the things you know, but not if you’re going to teach him hatred for one another’s faiths. Have I made myself clear?”

“Besides, we have a menorah  _ and _ a Christmas tree already,” Dean added. “We’ve been together  _ twelve years _ , why would you think we wouldn’t? We have a Torah and a bible too. We’ve combined our faiths for as long as we’ve been together. This issue between you guys only popped up when we told you our surrogate was pregnant. How about we just treat one another like  _ family _ , like we’ve been doing for the last decade? Huh? Can you do that for us? For our  _ son _ ?”

Both women fell silent, glancing at each other before looking at their sons.

“Ok,” Rachel nodded. “You’re right.”

“I’m sorry, you’re both absolutely right.” Mary agreed. She held her arms out and Dean set his son down in her arms. Rachel sat forward so she could see him too. She cooed softly to him as she smoothed her hand over the top of his head. Wanting their son to have both their DNA they’d gotten eggs from Cas’ sister, Naomi and used Dean’s sperm. As a result their son looked like Dean, but he had Cas’ dark hair and blue eyes. He was the most beautiful child either of them had ever laid eyes on, but then again they were rather biased.

“I saw the box in the corner of the living room,” Chuck said. “Are we going to be putting up the Christmas tree?” He ignored the annoyed look from his wife as he waited for his son or Dean to answer.

“That’s our tradition,” Dean nodded. “We have Thanksgiving dinner and then we put up the tree. We decorate it  _ as a family _ , and we would love to have you and Rachel join with us. We got some cute ornaments. There’s a lady on Etsy that makes them for people who are combining their faiths. We told her what we wanted and she made the most beautiful one for us. It’s a snowflake, but there is a menorah in the center. Hanging from each point on the snowflake are a tiny Christmas tree, a dreidel, Santa, a Star of David, and an angel. It’s maybe not the most religiously appropriate one, but it means a lot to us. Joshua’s name is on it too, just above the menorah. His date of birth is right under it.” He left to get the box with the aforementioned ornament and returned with it only a few seconds later. He set it on the table and opened it.

“Oh, wow, that’s beautiful,” Mary said. “Isn’t it, John?”

He leaned in to get a look at it. “Yep, that’s a nice one. Pretty big though, will a branch hold it?”

“If it won’t, we’ll find somewhere else to hang it,” Cas replied. “But we’re going to see if we can get it on the tree.”

“What are you putting atop the tree?” Rachel asked.

“Well, we decided years ago to alternate what we put up there. One year we’ll pick something Christian, another year we’ll pick something Jewish. Every third year we put up an angel, because there are angels in both faiths. This is that third year.” Dean explained.

“I gave Dean a hand crocheted angel for Christmas a few years ago. That’s what we put up.” Cas added.

“Well, I’ve never put up a Christmas tree before. How about we get started on that?” Chuck rubbed his hands together as he stood up. Dean and Cas could both see the excitement in his eyes. This was probably something he’d wanted to experience since he was a little boy.

“Alright,” Dean touched his mother’s shoulder. “You ok to hang onto him while we get the tree up? We’ll decorate it as a family though.”

“Sure, we’ll be ok in here,” She replied. “Food’s already put away anyway. Aside from some dessert later we don’t have anything to do but cuddle this little sweetheart.”

“We should put him in both sleepers and take pictures!” Rachel exclaimed.

“Oh boy,” Dean took his husband’s hand and pulled him along towards the living room. Chuck and John both followed.

“We have special lights to add this year. Found those on Etsy too,” Cas handed his father a box.

“Star of David lights?” Chuck laughed. “These are great!”

“Our theme this year is blue and white, so the lights fit in perfectly with it. The tree itself will always be a combination, never truly a Christmas tree and never fully a Hanukkah bush. It will be a representation of our family.” Cas smiled when Dean kissed his temple.

“We have special lighted snowflake and menorah decorations to put in the windows too,” Dean added. “Those are over there.” 

Between all four men the tree was up in minutes. They spent time putting the decorations in the windows and when that was done they drew Mary and Rachel into the living room. Joshua was stretching his body, his little tongue sticking out as his arms stretched over his head. His fathers both smiled when they saw him dressed in the “Baby’s First Christmas” sleeper. Cas managed to steal their son back and together, as a family they decorated the tree. When that was done they sang a mixture of Christmas and Hanukkah songs as they took a ton of pictures. Dean managed to get the ornament in the tree, and it faced out over the living room, the largest and most obvious ornament they had.

“It’s beautiful,” Rachel commented as she slid an arm around Mary’s waist. “I didn’t know a tree could be so pretty.”

“It really is,” Mary agreed. “See that ornament? That’s the one from Dean’s first Christmas. From his first to his eighteenth we bought him a new one each year.” She pointed out each of them. 

“They’ll have wonderful memories like that for their children,” Rachel looked at the baby and smiled.

“Here,” John stepped forward to put another ornament on the tree. “You got him his first ornament from you, but Mary and I wanted one for him too. It’s our gift to him for his first Christmas.” He hung the ornament, a little stocking with Joshua’s name and date of birth on it. 

“That’s really cute, I like that,” Dean leaned in to see it better. “Cas, there are little trucks and dolls sticking up out of it, and is that...a dreidel? Babe, look!”

Cas wrapped an arm around his waist and leaned his head on his husband’s shoulder. “That’s absolutely perfect.”

This was going to be an interesting yet wonderful holiday season, and they’d spend it together as a family. They were looking forward to the new memories that would be made. Joshua didn’t know it yet but he was the most loved little boy in the world. His grandmothers would make darn sure he felt it too.


End file.
